Comedy

It’s been a while, this seems to be how I always start these posts, It’s been a while and I’m sorry that it’s been so long. But as it’s Christmas, and like the crazy uncle who always smells of whiskey and stuffs fivers into your hands saying “don’t tell your mum”, I thought I’d show up again. What a year. What a goddam crazy year for me. At the end of this year I’m 35% less of the person I was at the beginning. I’ve lost 9 stone in total (how I did it is here), been signed to an agency, been a UK and International finalist in comedy awards I was nomiated for, gone viral a bunch and learned that Quorn is ground up mushroom. What a ride. I mean mushroom is pretty meaty on it’s own, why grind it up? Just eat mushrooms, fry them with butter or coconut oil, add garlic, delicious. I keep promising to update this blog more regularly but I’m never really sure what you want to read, there’s nearly 10,000 of you so it’s hard to please all of you. I’ve come to the conclusion that instead of being weird and picky about it I’m just going to post everything. Stories, pictures, videos, dates of stuff coming up, everything. Then you can decide. If at the end of next year there’s less of you than now maybe we’ll change it but really I’m sure there’s going to be more. I’ve been doing a joke advent calendar for the whole of December. Some of you will have seen these before in my other social media, some will have seen them when they went viral but I’m sticking all of them up here now so you’ve all definitely seen them straight from source. Enjoy

It’s been a while since I posted actual jokes on here, instead bombarding you with dieting and books like a librarian six weeks before their wedding day, and now I realise there’s nearly 10,000 of you I feel like I’m letting you down so here’s some stuff for you to enjoy as a thank you for following me and also because you laughing at my material fills a hole in my self esteem. Enjoy.

First off sorry about the lack of blogging, there are now over 5000 (closer to 10,000 including all the other places this goes) of you and it’s ridiculous for me to leave it months without updating. I will be rectifying that. Thank you to everyone that’s hung on though, I’ll make sure it’s worth it.

(worth it, right?)

Secondly a confession. I am a social media whore. I have a hole inside me that can only be filled by sharing my whole world with friends, family and complete strangers. What this has done is severely reduced my productivity (NO WAY! SPENDING TIME NOT WORKING IS REDUCING YOUR PRODUCTIVITY!? WHAT IN THE HELL?!). I’m not the only one, people the world over waste time on the countless forms of social media just clicking through the same 3 pages hoping for notifications to pop up of people interacting with their cat photos and undereducated semi political messages

(#jesuislettuce)

There have been countless studies on it, many of them funded by the platforms themselves in order to find out how to keep people on those very sites, and they all come to the same conclusion: we are lonely.

(nothing good happened in this picture, everything about this photo tells me the story ends with a phonecall and crying)

We want to reach out and find people who like the same things as us, people who can define us as individuals as well as providing us with the comfort of a herd. It’s hard to know who you really are in a vacuum (MAINLY DUE TO THE NOISE, AM I RIGHT?! *HIGH FIVES*) so to have a large group of people constantly able to tell you that yes you are right dirty foreigners should go home to their own country or no you shouldn’t have to work for a living, everything should be right there on a plate for you means that you can say “That’s who I am! I am a lazy, entitled, racist!” it’s not great but at least you know. No one likes uncertainty

(well some people do, some people use it to cement their position but then I’m using the term people loosely)

and that’s the main problem with social media, it can be a great tool for communication and spreading the word or getting behind a cause but mostly it’s a catalyst for narcissism and rampant paranoia. Even this post is a massive display of arrogance and self importance, what do you care about a fat guy who’s trying to distance himself from social media? You don’t! Or rather you shouldn’t because really all we’re doing is creating little groups of people all thinking they’re right then being completely surprised that there’s other people with different ideas. We’re isolating ourselves.

(and we all know how that turns out, Pauly Shore cries himself to sleep every night)

and that isolation is a terrible thing. Just days ago was the 2 year anniversary of Robin Williams suicide, as I’ve said on here before Robin is the reason I do comedy and it hit me hard. Whenever anyone takes their own life it’s a terrible thing, it means that person can see no other future ahead except pain and they don’t want it. I tried it once, spoiler alert: I failed, and only by talking about it did I get over it. Talking is a great tool for getting over depression so here’s a video of me talking about it so other people can feel like it’s ok to talk about it Talking about suicide but with jokes

But it can go the other way, people reach out and no one reaches back or even worse people think it’s ok to abuse other people because it makes them feel better, this in turn isolates the person being bullied further. Again this has become the majority of interaction over and above supportive messages on social media which just goes to prove that if you leave humans with any kind of wonderous new discovery they’ll find a way to be an asshole with it.

(hey guys I’ve got this thing that makes the food taste better and means we don’t get poisoned by it, it makes it hot, what are you doing guys? GUYS?!)

Really what I’m saying is I’m pulling out of most of social media unless it’s to interact with people who want to come to a show. That does mean I’ll have more time to make shit and update this so hurray to anyone who cares. It’s easy to get lost in the great echo chamber and as Jean-Paul Sartre gets famously misquoted on “Hell is other people”

Brexit, the stupid name given to a decision we shouldn’t have to make. I know a lot of people will disagree with me and suggest that this is a great example of democracy and to those people I say “WE AS A COUNTRY CAN NOT BE TRUSTED! WE VOTED IN THE TORIES!”. I’m not saying we’re all stupid and don’t know what’s best for us, I’m saying there is solid evidence that we’re stupid and don’t know what’s best for us.

I’ve said this all before on a video so rather than reading words on a page watch and listen to them fall out of my mouth like cake crumbs at an 11 year old’s birthday party I managed to sneak in to:

Essentially I’m saying vote Remain but only because we don’t want to give any more power to people who have proven that the only thing they do with it is make their friends richer and the vulnerable deader.

Also to lighten the mood here’s some jokes I wrote to offer as a sacrifice to you guys for all the posts I haven’t made in the last year, this is being rectified and you can expect to see a regular blog here again.

(Thanks to Richard Wood for taking those great photos of me at Cardiff Glee)

After a sell out run of work in progress shows at Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival I’m now performing my solo show “Distant” for real at the Lichfield Garrick Theatre on Saturday March 5th. I’m so damn excited about it because this is a show about things I believe in, it’s counter culturalism at it’s best and I fully intend to change some minds. As I said we had a run of sell out dates in Leicester so would love to fill the theatre on March 5th.

I wrote this show as a reaction to where I was a year ago and how far I felt that was from where I wanted to be. Now I’m closer to that, saying things that I feel matter instead of just empty distractions. If you like intelligent comedy, sticking it to the man, the word “fuck” or just a fat guy who’s passionate about change then you should come.

A few months ago I was starting to experiment with slightly darker comedy, as you guys will know, and I sent out a couple of jokes into the ether not really hoping for anything back but just seeing what everyone thought of my new direction. The response was phenomenal. My stuff got shared everywhere, tens of thousands shared my personal posts and millions copied it and shared it with me tagged. It even got translated into French, German, someone changed the currencies so it worked in America and Australia, it was liberating and completely amazing. This wasn’t my usual stuff, this was stuff I thought was too dark for an audience.

(here’s the most popular one, photo credit to Tyler Howlett)

It made me feel incredible, I was talking about stuff I believed in and people loved it.

I almost didn’t put this up. I’d put a few up before and the reaction from some peers had been so negative that it made me question myself. I started talking to a fantastic comic called Simon King (seriously check out this video – LINK) who encouraged me to stick up that meme. I did and now it’s everywhere.

Then he encouraged me to do a whole set based on this kind of stuff and then a show together.

So now we have a whole show we’re doing in London on Monday January 22nd at the Camden Head in Camden and we’d love you to come. Here’s the link to buy tickets – http://www.wegottickets.com/event/345133

It’s going to be something entirely different to what’s around now but also a bit old school, comedy with teeth and intelligence. Check out the link and if you’re reading this it’s probably for you.

You may have noticed that I’ve been sticking up a bunch of pictures of myself with my jokes written on them. Like this one:

They’re from my upcoming show “Distant” and they’re very different to what I normally do. I wanted to cover topics that people steer away from on stage because they either find it too difficult or want to be safer in their approach. I genuinely believe comedy, when done in the right way, can change the world.

(Like this)

However when you’re tackling subjects like this you’ll always face some kind of opposition. It’s easy to feel bad and question yourself when you get comments like this:

Which was in response to this joke:

That’s a pretty extreme reaction and it’d be easy to look at that and the many others and think “everyone hates me and I’m doing it wrong”. I started to think like that when I had a phone call with a good friend who’s a successful motivational speaker. I told him about this and he said he’d seen my stuff and thought it was great “you shouldn’t feel bad” he said (I’m paraphrasing) “these people don’t pay your rent”.

And just like that this massive weight lifted off my shoulders. The people who don’t like it won’t like it and the people that do will be your audience and they’re the only people that matter when you’re performing. The peers that mock your approach to things, the anonymous keyboard warriors that attack you, the heckler who shouts nonsense during your set, these people aren’t your audience and are thus completely irrelevant. Negative criticism always comes from a point of fear and jealousy.

No matter what you do remember that. Even if you’re working in a call centre and you’re worried about doing 30 minutes of overtime because it makes you look like you’re sucking up. Remember that your critics won’t feel the benefit of your extra work and are, in fact, proof that you’re doing the right thing.